[马克.吐温,不平凡的一生] Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was not only a great writer but also a famous humorist.
· He was born in a small Missouri village near the Mississippi River in 1835. His father, a poor lawyer, died when he was only twelve years old. So he had to leave school and make his own living. For ten years, he worked in printing shops in many cities. Then he became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. In 1861, Mark Twain became a miner in Nevada. During this period, he started to write short articles. It was as this time that he adopted the pen name "Mark Twain".
· Later Mark Twain worked in San Francisco for a while and then became a miner again. In his spare time, he wrote a short story called Tile Celebrated Jumping Frog ofCalaveras Coun.ty. The story made him known all over the country. In 1867, he went to New York and that year published his first book. His next book, hmocentsAbroad, was published in 1869. It gave him a national reputation.
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